


Bridges

by redstaronmyshoulder (CaptainAmelia22)



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Brainwashing, F/M, Forgetting relationships, Past Brainwashing, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon Fix-It, Undercover Missions, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:21:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2081847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainAmelia22/pseuds/redstaronmyshoulder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Both wonder when loneliness stopped suiting the likes of the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow.</p><p>Neither remembers what the empty space in their beds feels like anymore.</p><p>And suddenly…</p><p>Remembering doesn’t hurt anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bridges

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic based on comic canon. It starts at the end of WS #14 Black Widow Hunt and eases into Nathan Edmondson's Black Widow book. It's kind of a take on #8 of that book I suppose, even though I wrote this before that issue came out. 
> 
> Also it should be noted, while in #8 Natasha KNOWS who the Winter Soldier is-if not what he MEANS to her in actuality-this fic just assumes she doesn't remember him at all. 
> 
> No pain, no gain!
> 
> Oh well, enough mumbling. 
> 
> Hope you all like it!
> 
> -M

_If any word that I said_  
 _Could have made you forget_  
 _I'd have given you them all_  
 _But it was all in your head_  
  
 _And we're burning all the bridges now_  
 _Watching them go up in flames_  
 _No way to build them up again~Bridges_ by Broods

* * *

 

“Natasha, Natalia, _please_.  It’s me-it’s Bucky!”  

His voice breaks on her name and as the rain beats around them, around where he kneels a safe distance from her bleeding and broken body there in the middle of Arlington, he wonders if his cheeks are wet entirely from the downpour.  

Her eyes-wild and more black than green-lock on his as he settles his hand gently on her ankle, anything to anchor her (and how many times has he done that for her-has she done it for him?  Too many fucking times for counting…)-lock on his and her chest heaves as panic once more sweeps through her.

His skin crawls at the blank expression he sees there and he knows, before she even opens her mouth, what she is going to say.

_Oh god-not this.  Please…_

“Who the hell is Bucky?!” she snarls, every muscle in her body tensing as she prepares to destroy him.

He doesn’t have the heart to tell her, as he kneels in the muddy fields of Arlington, with the campy and well-worn effigies of Captain America and his trusty side-kick Bucky Barnes looking on, that she’s already broken him.

Too many fucking times for counting.

“Aww _fuck_ ,” Barton groans from behind him, his bowstring taut and armed with a tranquilizer dart none of them want to use on her.  “Nat…”

Her eyes blaze angrily but in the end…

She destroys him just like Leo Novokov destroyed her.

It’s the Black Widow’s perfect revenge-made worse because it is not of her own choosing, kneeling here in the mud and blood of Arlington, his hands as empty as her memories.

None of them chose this.  None of them.

And yet the same choice is always made for them in the end.

_Who the hell is Bucky?!_

“Don’t do this to me Natalia,” he whispers as she is carried off, unconscious and strapped down with restraints worthy of the Hulk.  “Not _this_ , please god.”  

He knows then-it’s tears on his cheeks, not rain.  And he doesn’t have the strength to wipe them away.  

They destroy him.

_Who the hell is Bucky?!_

_I wish I knew, Natalia.  I wish I fucking knew..._

**

He has never had much time for prayer in the past-prayer is for the weak, the people who wish someone else could take the blame for their mistakes-but on the night they finally get Natasha back from Leo and SHIELD starts fiddling with her mind once more, he finds himself praying.

It’s an unsettling experience.  

 _Don’t do this to me Natalia,_ he thinks as the hours drag on and his body stiffens. _Don’t leave me alone in this shit life.  Please god, don’t do this to her..._

“She’s going to pull-through Buck.”  

He doesn’t look up from the scarred metal knuckles of his left hand when Steve sits beside him in the stark conference room Hill has set aside for their team.  The Black Widow Hunters, she and the other SHIELD grunts have started calling them.  Barton thinks it’s hilarious-keeps muttering about how Nat would hate it, how she would insist on calling it her Harem just before her fist connected with Hill’s jaw.  Logan simply smokes cigar-after-cigar in stony silence, his gaze never leaving Bucky’s face; Bucky can feel the resentment rolling off the man from where he sits as far down the table as he can get from him, but he barely cares.

He fiddles with the knife Leo left stuck in his thigh during their last desperate fight in Arlington and prays silently to himself.  

 _Let her be okay, god,_ he thinks repeatedly, even as his eyes start to itch from exhaustion and the damaged nerves in his shoulder start to scream for attention-for her fingers on his twisted body, for the warmth of her curves pressed to his agonized muscles.  

He doesn’t have the courage to tell himself it will probably be a while before she is in his arms again.

He doesn’t have the strength to think, _Will I ever hold her again?_

So he prays.

_Please let her come out of this okay…_

_I’m sorry Natalia.   I’m...I fucked up._

The doctors tell them her mind has been damaged extensively during this last round of memory manipulation-that some threads have been completely broken.  He knows what that means, even if the others don’t, and his eyes lock on the metal digits of his left hand.  He knows what they mean when they say things like “the neural bridges of her cerebrum have been damaged” and “the neural interface may be too much for her to bear.”  

He knows what it _fucking means._

The doctors stop coming after a while, after the last one found the metal fingers of his left hand tightening around her trachea.  He doesn’t remember what he said to her, doesn’t remember the angry Russian spilling from his lips as he _squeezed_ , but he does remember Steve stepping between them and saying Natasha’s name.

Saying how she wouldn’t want him to behave like this.

Even now, with her mind nothing but a broken circuit board waiting for the right wires and solder to come along, her name saves him.

Breaks him.

Fucking _triggers_ him.

He doesn’t apologize to the doctor.  And in the end they stop coming to him with news on her slow progress and repair.

In the end...it’s better for them to just talk to Steve or Barton.

He simply prays.

 _Forgive me, Natalia, forgive me...I let this happen to you.  God, punish me-don’t do this to her.  It’s-it’s my fault..._ All _of this is my fault._

“Bucky?”  

Steve’s hand rests gently on his shoulder sometime in the wee hours of the morning and he jumps, a strange feeling of guilt washing over him as he glances at the men gathered around the room, their eyes locked on his; he wonders, as smoke billows from Logan’s lips and Barton’s eyebrow quirks, if they know just what the Winter Soldier has been doing in the hours since they dragged him from Natasha’s operating room to this tiny hell-hole.  

He wonders if they’ll forgive him for his sins, since Natasha will probably never get the chance.

He doubts it...

Only Steve watches him with any amount of sympathy and concern in his gaze and Bucky shudders at the small smile curling his lips; he knows what Steve is not saying in that moment, knows it better than the prayers still swirling in half-forgotten fragments through his aching skull.

_Don’t do this to yourself, Buck.  Go home-get some rest.  Come back to her in the morning._

He can see it in Steve’s eyes, can see the orders he won’t voice out loud but he doesn’t have the strength to tell him.

Tell him “home” smells like Natasha.  

That “rest” is pointless without Natasha curled safely in his arms.  

And “come back to her” is just as pointless.

He will never leave her.

Even if she doesn’t know who he is.  

It’s all he deserves, isn’t it?  Always being there for her-keeping her safe, loving her, _knowing_ her-even when she barely recognizes his name, let alone his face.

But Steve will never understand.

He has never been the Winter Soldier or the Black Widow.

He has never had to love either of them-even when the shadows dig into their brains.

He’s _noble._

And they’re…

“Yeah,” he mutters as Steve’s fingers tighten in reassurance and his head pounds even more insistently.  Smothering.  That’s all this has become.  He stands and winces as the arm grinds in it’s metal socket, setting his teeth on edge.  He simply grins bitterly in their general directions and stalks from the room, his shoulders tense and his muscles screaming in agony.  

“I’m going.”  

He doesn’t say where he’s going-he doesn’t need to, really-and Steve doesn’t stop him, for which he will always be grateful.  

Just another reason why he owes his miserable life to Captain America.  

The SHIELD medical base they’ve been sent to is quiet-sterile-and he feels out of place in it’s green halls.  Her room though…

They’ve placed Natasha in a room that seems more like a tomb, than a recovery ward.  

He hesitates in the doorway, every muscle tensed as he waits to see if she’s awake, but for the first time in days something seems to work out.  

She’s still asleep, her dark red hair spread across her pillow and his fingers itch to pull the strands away from her cheeks.  She always hated her hair touching her face-hated the way it felt like strangers’ fingers stroking her in her sleep.  

He doesn’t touch her though.

Doesn’t...push.

“I’m here Natalia,” he whispers as he sags into the stiff backed plastic chair someone saw fit to place under her window, a safe distance from her bed.  “I’m here…”

For the first time in days he lets himself relax, just a bit.  

And as his eyes start to drift close and the dull ache in his shoulder begins to ease, a passing thought flits across his mind.  

_I’m safe when she’s at my side…_

**

There’s a man sleeping in the chair beside her bed when she wakes up.

A shadow of a beard covers his strong jaw and slightly too-long dark hair tumbles into his eyes; he smells like blood and gunpowder and rain.

He scares her.

She doesn’t know him.

“Please make him leave,” she whispers to Steve, when he comes in to check on her.  Even through the cloud of drugs weighing her down she can see his disappointment and worry.

But she doesn’t allow herself to feel guilty.

The man with the metal arm scares her.

And she _doesn’t know him._

“Get him out of here,” she snarls breathlessly when Clint holds her down and Steve hauls the stranger from her room.  She clenches her teeth as he stares wordlessly at her from over the Captain’s shoulder but she doesn’t acknowledge him.

He smells like Arlington, like Novokov.

He smells like her doom.

He...He scares her.

And she will never recognize him again.

“Who was he?” she asks, after several long minutes and Clint’s eyes are pained as he sighs and runs bandaged fingers through his tousled blondish hair.  

“Bu-Just a friend, Nat.  He was...just a friend.”

It’s the way he says it, with his eyes downcast and his shoulders tensed under the white t-shirt he wears, that makes her wonder if her old partner is lying.  

Because something tells her…

Tells her she’s missing something obvious.

 _Someone_ obvious.  

“I don’t like him,” she whispers into her pillow as she curls into herself and tries to not feel all of the empty space at her back.  “He-he scares me.”  

She forgets him all over again, the moment her eyes close.  

And for a very long time she doesn’t notice how empty her bed-and her life-seem.

She’s the Black Widow.  

Loneliness suits her…

**

_Three Months Later_

She has a shadow.  

Not for the first time in recent months since Novokov played with her mind and broke her once more, the back of her neck prickles and her skin crawls at the sensation of eyes watching her.  

She glances up from the paper cup full of steaming coffee she holds reverently between her palms and studies her favorite Queens Starbucks and it’s patrons carefully.  She can still feel those eyes on her-can still tell she’s being watched.

But there’s no one interesting in the shop-not this early in the morning anyway-so she tries to shrug her paranoia off and goes back to sipping her steaming bitter coffee.  

Her eyes continue studying the shop though, absently keeping an eye out for trouble, even though there is probably none.  

She hates this.  Ever since Arlington…

She shakes her head minutely and turns to her phone, with Hill’s message (orders, really but no one honestly orders the Black Widow around.  Not if they want to live.  Not even Maria Hill) telling her about the latest mission she’s being sent on.   

Bolivia has to be warmer than New York at Christmas time, right?

Her lips quirk at the terse wording in the message, at the formal way Hill talks to her now that she’s taken over for Fury once more, and she sighs.

She hasn’t taken a mission on for SHIELD in months-not since…

Well.  

She shivers, her skin bumping and she snarls silently to herself as the sensation of being watched grows stronger and she looks up in time to see a man in the far corner of the cafe glance away and suddenly become engrossed in his phone.

Her eyes narrow dangerously at the realization that she truly is being watched and before she can even stop herself, she’s confronting him.

“What is your problem, asshole?!” she hisses, her hands striking his table’s surface hard enough to shake his paper cup and mostly empty glass plate.  The clatter of the glass on the formica surface of the table is loud in the general stillness of the Starbucks but no one pays them any mind.

This is New York.  

If someone isn’t yelling at someone else at some point during the day, something is probably wrong.  

The man has brown eyes.  

Or black?  

She can’t tell.  

Deep shadows claw their way under them and she winces inwardly at the sight of such painful bruising; he looks like he hasn’t slept in half a century.

And he’s watching her like a man dying of thirst watches a stream of water trickling past his lips, just out of reach.  

Her skin crawls at the thought.  

“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” she hisses, her face mere inches from his and she’s itching to pull her pistols on him.

To slam the Widow’s Bite into his throat and watch him _burn._

Her lips itch to kiss his, despite the beard covering his strong jaw.  

_What the hell?_

Her nails bite into the table surface as she fights the sudden urge to touch him, to stroke the back of her fingers through that dense shadow covering his lower face, and something like fear washes over her.

His flinch at her question makes her hesitate though, if only for a second, but then his lips twitch in a smirk she wishes she didn’t find attractive.  

“Good morning to you too, ma’am,” he says, an easy Brooklyn drawl in his voice that reminds her a bit of Rogers’.  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

It’s not.

It’s a shit day at the very end of the year and there’s already an inch of dingy snow on the ground.

Her eyebrow quirks and she almost growls at him.  

But his smirk stops her. And his voice makes her skin bump.

And those eyes…

“Who are you?” she hisses, her face inches from his and he smells like leather, gunpowder and bitterly cold air.

He smells like…

_Arlington._

Her eyes widen, widen at the realization that there was something else buried in his voice, something a primal part of her knew and understood.  

His voice sounds like her childhood.

It sounds like pain and bitter love.  

It sounds like…

He holds out his hand and he just smiles an enigmatic smile that by no means reaches his eyes.  She doesn’t think his eyes have ever been anything other than dark and emotionless.

She understands that.

“Barnes,” he says, with that voice that sounds like Brooklyn and the Motherland all at once.  “James Barnes.  Looks like we’re going to be partners on this one.”  

She can only stare at him, eyes wild and fingers shaking just a bit as the unbelievable urge to kiss him keeps growing in the back of her skull.  

“We’ll see about that,” she snaps, straightening and pulling her black leather gloves on-anything to keep her skin as far from his as possible.  She turns to go, but not before she catches the fine muscles of his face flinching once more at her words and an unreadable expression in his gaze.

It looks oddly enough...like sadness.  

“I work best alone Barnes,” she tosses over her shoulder, her words as cold and bitter as her life has been in the three months since Arlington.

And with that, she shakes him-him and his strange accent and his shadowed eyes and that damn jaw clenching at her words-off and rushes from her favorite Starbucks tucked away in Queens.  

She does not hear him sigh and murmur into his coffee, “I know Natalia. I know…”

**

Hill doesn’t back down.  

Clint doesn’t back her up.

In the end…

She has a partner for this last-minute mission in Bolivia; two people are needed apparently, two people with their particular skill-sets and isn’t it just _convenient_ that they’re supposed to act as lovers.

She has the distinct feeling of being setup.  

That there is something else happening here, besides the assassination of a dirty CIA operative selling contraband Starktech to Bolivian drug lords for cheap.  

She wonders if she should just kill Barnes when they’re in the air and take the jet somewhere else, somewhere where SHIELD will never find her.

India, maybe.  

Banner always seemed to like it in India…

 _Fuck this._  

“Don’t expect me to talk to him or end up as friends with him,” she snarls into her phone as she walks up the stairs of the private SHIELD jet idling quietly just outside of the City.  “I don’t need help, Hill.”

Maria just sighs at the other end of the line and Natasha can almost see her rubbing her forehead in frustration.  

“He’s not there to ‘help’, Romanov.  He’s working the mission, just the same as you; you know the particulars.  We need two operatives to identify and neutralize the mark, that’s it.  He was the best one available, since Barton’s taken a leave of absence.  So don’t be so territorial,” the Director mutters absently.  Natasha’s eyes roll and her jaw clenches.  

But this man…

He scares her on a base level and _fuck it all_ but she wants to be his partner.

And she also wants to shoot him between the eyes.

Barnes is grinning at her when she finally enters the jet-a smug, self-assured smirk that sets her bones on fire and sends warning bells up in the back of her skull-on his clean-shaven face.  

She almost growls under her breath as she hangs up on Hill, mid-pep talk, and slams the heavy door behind her with finality.  He watches her so carefully, so hungrily and she wonders if he knows just how terrifying that is for her.  

It’s nice to see him without a beard…

It’s unsettling how invested he seems in her; most men barely glance at her when she passes their way, let alone _watch_ her so carefully.

Unless, of course, she means for them too.  

But this- _he_ -is so different.

So...dark.

Like her.

“Hello partner,” he says after the silence has dragged on for a moment too long, that strange mix of an accent washing over her as she dumps her bag on the furthest seat from his.  

She doesn’t acknowledge his words or him, simply tosses her hair with a faint snort and a flick of her fingers in his direction.  

She doesn’t look at him-except for out of the corner of her eyes, because in all honesty something draws her to him.

Something...primal.

He flexes his gloved left hand absently, flinching slightly as he does and everything about him screams danger, screams coiled predator ready to flash claws towards its prey.

The spider shivers at the thought and turns to her weapons, muttering angrily under her breath as she does, in a half-heard blend of Russian and English that she hopes he does not understand.

He smiles to himself at hermuttered words and pulls the file describing their mission from his bag; he doesn’t read though.

He doesn’t have time for that.

Natasha Romanov is once more fighting alongside him, even if she doesn’t know who he is.

And for the first time in months…

Things start making sense.    

**

He catches her smiling that night, when they finally arrive at their hotel tucked deep in the hills of Bolivia; the absent tilt of her lips makes her green eyes sparkle in a way he hasn’t seen for too many long months.  

 _We’re going to be fine Natalia,_ he thinks to himself as she shakes out the black as sin gown Hill’s provided for their undercover op at the sparkling mansion just a few miles from where they’re based.

His tux is only a little wrinkled when he removes it from it’s Armani suit-bag.  He doesn’t care about the wrinkles though.  Within hours it’ll most likely be ruined.

He does care about black as sin silk though, clinging to curves he had once known by touch, and red rubies spreading along clavicles he had once trailed teeth and lips along as her breasts pressed into his palms.  

He shudders and forces his eyes away from the gapped bathroom door, where he can just make her out, standing in nothing but black satin and lace underwear and thigh holsters.  

Her red hair tumbles down her back in easy waves he longs to run his fingers through but he forces himself to turn his mind and body from hers, to the mission at hand, and presses his finger into a tiny button hidden at the very top of his left shoulder.

The metal of his left arm shimmers for a moment but then, as she pulls the bathroom door open and steps into the bedroom, clothed and armed to the teeth, he pulls two apparent flesh-and-bone arms through his tux jacket.  

Her eyes study him for a moment and he grins easily back.

“Ready to kick some CIA ass?” he asks, his voice light despite the coiling anxiety in the pit of his stomach at the thought of her once more going into danger.  She simply pinches her lips and sighs before grabbing her handbag and light-weight jacket from the back of the room’s only chair.

“Let’s go,” she snaps to him, her voice as stiff as her back and he sighs as well.

As he follows her from the room, he closes his eyes and whispers to himself, _We’re going to be fine Natalia, I swear to you.  We’re going to be fine and I’ll keep you safe..._

He tries to not think about how his thoughts concerning the Black Widow sound like prayers lately.

_**_

He fucks up.  

“Goddammit,” he hisses from between clenched teeth.  Pain, fiery and absolutely agonizing, rips through his shoulder-the left one-and it takes all he has not to pass out.

“ _Sonuvabitch_.”  

At first he’s so focused on the pain, on the blood leaking from the bullet wound that’s torn his arm apart, he doesn’t hear her enter the hotel bathroom and sigh.

“Hold still,” she mutters as she kneels beside him on the grungy tiles he’s stretched bonelessly across.  “I’ll have to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.”  

His eyes fly open at her voice speaking from mere inches away and his breath catches painfully in his chest.  “Natasha, don’t-” he groans, instinctively pulling away from her outstretched hand.

He knows this is wrong.

He knows he shouldn’t even be here with her, the heat of their bodies warming the moss green tiles they rest on.

The Bolivian mission was a Trojan Horse.  Just a means to an end.

A way to get close to her, to watch her work once more.  

A way to...anchor himself.  

James Barnes has never been an honorable man.  

Natasha’s eyes are shadowed, their deep green depths unreadable in the grim lighting of this hellhole they’ve run to after things went south.  But her hand never wavers and she closes the little distance between them, her fingers pressing firmly into his shoulder.

He bites back a scream at the agonizing pain ripping from the entry wound to his very lungs and his body stiffens beside hers.  

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her voice pained as she watches the blood drain from his face and his throat cord in agony.  “The bullet is still in your shoulder.”  She swallows audibly and strokes her knuckles along his cheek, nothing but instinct in her touch.  “I’m going to have to remove it James, or it’s going to get infected.”  

He simply grits his teeth and swears in a dozen different languages, cursing himself and his stupidity.  

Cursing himself for not paying as close attention to his surroundings as he should have.  

For getting caught up in her all over again-in the feel of her curves in his arms as they danced, in the way her green eyes had sparkled the moment the orchestra had begun to play one of her favorite songs.  

He hadn’t cared at that moment, how the mission was going to fall out because in the end all that mattered was…

_Her._

And then their mark had caught wind of them, had somehow found out they were sent to neutralize him before his sale of contraband to their gracious drug-lord host; before Bucky had had any chance to act, to put an early stop to the mark’s job, a gun had fired in Natasha’s direction and he’d done what he’d always done when it came to her.

The sound of her pistols firing in the mark’s direction still ring in his ears-or maybe that’s the after effects of the bomb they’d set, should their ultimate mission fail-but he doesn’t miss her saying his name.

With something other than loathing in her voice.

Sacrifice.  

Sure.  

“I’m going to get you to the bed, James.  I can’t do anything in this bathroom.  James, can you hear me?”

Her voice is concerned, her eyes bright with anxiety and for the first time in months she looks a bit more like her old self.

The self he’d woken to on bad nights, with her hair curled in his fingers and her legs tangled with his.  

He wishes he could tell her he misses her.

He wishes…

“Come on James,” she sighs, her hair tumbling forward to trail over her soot and blood-stained cheeks.  “Let’s get you up.”  

“Fuck,” he breathes when she wraps her arm gently around his waist and hauls him upright, her slender body pressed tight to his side.  “I can’t have you do this Natasha,” he groans, every movement he makes jostling his arm and making his entire body shudder in white-hot agony.  “Just-just get out of here, get to the extraction point.  I’ll-I’ll be fine.”

He won’t be though.

He can’t…

_I can’t lose her again._

Blood streams steadily from the bullet-hole, washes over his skin because something is keeping the wound from healing.  Something is keeping the skin ragged and raw and that bullet lodged tightly in the shattered metal and frayed wiring of his prosthetic.

Someone knew who they were playing for in that mansion.

Someone knew _what_ they were.

And the mark had acted like he’d most likely been trained to do, should two super-soldiers move in to mess up his sale.

The smell of blood and smoke washes over his nose but he barely pays it any mind.  He’s grown used to that scent.

It’s his favorite perfume, he jokes to himself, his lips curled in a bitter sneer as blood clots in the waistband of his ruined slacks.

He groans when her hair presses against his cheek, when her scent washes over his nose and isn’t it funny?  How her very presence can completely break him?

“You have to get out of here Natasha,” he snarls through clenched jaws, abject terror moving in to replace the anger and pain washing over him since the mansion blew and she hauled him from the wreckage.  “It’s not-it’s not safe and there could be others coming for you.”  

She dumps him on the creaky twin bed and snorts.

“Like hell,” she snaps, green eyes blazing furiously.  “I never leave a partner behind.”

He stills, pain and blood forgotten, and their eyes lock.  “Natasha,” he groans but she waves his words away.  

“Just-just shut up, Barnes and let me see what you’ve done to yourself,” she mutters as her cheeks flame and her fingers yank the front of his shirt open, revealing the damage his body has taken for her.  

She pushes him back, her hands firm but gentle on his screaming skin and he leans back against the pillows with a soft groan. The room is spinning now, spinning sickeningly and he hasn’t felt blood loss like this since the ‘40’s.

He hasn’t felt death brush this close since...well.

That had been a bit sooner than the ‘40’s.  

But still.

“Shit,” she breathes, her eyes widening the moment she cuts the sleeve of his formerly white tuxedo shirt away from the still-bleeding wound.  “James, I…”

He catches her hand gently between his and summons a ghost of a smile, even as his vision starts to spot.  “I know, Natalia.  I know.”  He swallows thickly when her eyes rise to meet his and he sees the horror in their green depths.

Horror and resignation.  

He knows that look.

So very well.

Fuck it, he feels it himself, right now with her hand pressed between his own and her hip resting beside his.

His fingers shake a bit as he stretches out his left hand to stroke her cheek, just once.

For old time’s sake.

He misses the feel of her…

Misses everything about her.

 _I got her back, for a little bit tonight though,_ he thinks vaguely as she leans into his touch.   _Somehow...somehow I got her back._

“Get out of here, little spider,” he rasps, pain making his very vocal cords writhe in agony.  “I’m done.  Just-just get out of here, get to the extraction point Hill’s got set up.  And-and be safe.  For me, Natalia.  Be safe.”  

Blood, warm and thick, washes over the musculature of his chest and arm and damn, isn’t it amazing how much the body can hold?

How much the body can lose for another human being?

He doesn’t look away from her, doesn’t look away from the shadows in her green eyes and the tears streaming unnoticed down her cheeks.

He doesn’t…

Let go.

“ _Get out of here_ ,” he snarls and he shoves her forcefully, with the last of his arm’s bionic strength and the nerves scream in their own version of pain as the arm shimmers back to it’s normal metal form.  Every reserve of his energy is focused on her, on the way she stumbles from the bedside, the ragged remains of her dress swirling around her barefeet, and her eyes widen when they catch sight of the black and red star on his shoulder, on the ridges of his fingers bending and flexing as he fights to keep his body functioning.

“James,” she whispers and it almost sounds as if…

As if…

The last time he sees her, she is covered in his blood, in ash and singed black silk.

And she is as beautiful as she had been when they were children in the Red Room.  

“I love you, Natalia,” he chokes through the blood welling in his throat and the blackness filming his eyes.  “I love you.”

_Forgive me._

**

She prays for James Barnes.

And isn’t that the most ridiculous thing?

The Black Widow, praying for a metal-armed assassin she shouldn’t care anything about?

_God, don’t let him die.  Please, don’t let him die…_

_I can’t lose him._

_I…_

_I can’t lose him.  Again._

She misses the extraction.  

For the first time in three months, she doesn’t care about that or SHIELD’s problems.

She wraps her fingers around his metal wrist and just…

_Please come back to me James.  Please._

_**_

_Months Later_

He wakes up one night, to her fingers rubbing gentle circles into the bunched muscles of his shoulder, and her lips at his ear.

He doesn’t have to ask, to know he woke her with his muffled screams-that sometime in the night he started dreaming of Arlington or possibly Bolivia-and for a moment he feels shame.

Her lips press into his shoulder, where metal fuses with skin and he shudders with the last of his body’s pent-up terror.  

“Come back to me James,” she murmurs as she presses her body into his and the pads of her fingers even tighter into his skin.  “You’re safe.  Wake up now.”

He opens his eyes-forcing the last fog of his nightmares away-and heaven is suddenly that much closer to him.  

“Natalia,” he whispers, his voice ragged from screaming into his pillow but she only smiles.  

“Hello again, soldier,” she says, those fingers still working at the muscles she always seems to know hurt the worst from the metal’s straining.  

Her eyes, green and completely free of Arlington’s shadows, lock on his and for the first time in months-since Arlington, since Bolivia, since waking up in the Los Angeles SHIELD medical facilities after their botched mission-he feels truly safe.

Truly safe, with her arms wrapped tightly around him.

“Where were you, James?  You were a million miles away, just then,” she whispers, her head propped on the metal bicep of his left arm and her hair tumbles over his skin.

Her scent, warm and musky and so very _there_ washes over him once more and for the first time in months, he realizes.

Realizes he’s not alone anymore.  

He smiles and cups her cheek gently in his palm.  

 _Not alone, not anymore,_ he thinks as his thumb strokes her pale skin.  

“I missed you,” he says, his voice much firmer than it had been a moment ago.  “I’m sorry I left you.”

She laughs at that, a soft laugh far gentler than any would ever think the Black Widow being capable of, and presses a kiss to the scarred metal of his palm.  

“It doesn’t matter James,” she says as he drags her even closer into his arms, their bodies pressing too perfectly together.  “I knew you’d come back to me.”

Her lips press into his, almost as if she’s never stopped kissing him and isn’t this wonderful?

His own private heaven?

“You always come back to me, in the end James Barnes,” she murmurs, her fingers tangling in his hair and her hips rocking into his.  “You’re my anchor.”  

Fingers, metal and flesh, cup her waist-anchoring her as only he can do-and she presses yet another kiss to his throat.  

“I love you,” she whispers and he is the only one who notices how her words sound like a prayer.  

He is the only one who…

Both wonder when loneliness stopped suiting the likes of the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow.

Neither remembers what the empty space in their bed feels like anymore.

And suddenly…

Remembering who they are doesn’t hurt anymore.

  

 


End file.
